Russell Flint

Born in Edinburgh in 1880, the son of Francis Wighton Flint, a watercolour artist and designer, Russell Flint certainly had the background for an artistic career. After Daniel Stewarts College, he entered the Royal Institution School of Art in Edinburgh where he learned the ground rules of line and colour which he was to develop into his own distinctive style. However, it was a six year apprenticeship as a draughtsman at a large printing works in Edinburgh which gave him the necessary discipline required by all great artists.

In 1903 Russell Flint was taken on to the staff of the Illustrated London News as an artist illustrator. In that era before the photograph had entirely ousted drawing and engraving from the pages of newspapers and magazines, the artist was disciplined by the confines of time and editorial in a manner which has since vanished The fact that the Illustrated London News, was a journal distributed throughout the British Empire, took the young Flint's name around the world, laying the foundation for the international status he later enjoyed as an artist.

The war took Flint into uniform, first in the R.N.V.R. as a lieutenant attached to the Royal Navy Air Service. By 1918 he had become "Admiralty Assistant Overseer - Airships" and returned to Scotland. He was in fact based at an Airship Station on the Clyde where he was able to commute to Glasgow and renew acquaintances at the School of Art.

After leaving the service, Flint traveled in France and Spain and began to draw and paint landscapes and small towns of the rural regions of those countries. By 1924 he was elected Associate of the Royal Academy and became a full member nine years later.

In 1936 he became President of the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolour.

William Russell Flint was knighted in 1947 and painted until his death at the age of 89. His career was long and distinguished - his painting has given immense pleasure to people across the world and through limited editions his work has reached even wider public.